


From Oasis, With Regards

by Jimiel



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Birth Years, Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Because Fuck Canon - That's Why, F/M, Interspecies, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, Interspecies Sex, Mind Control, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Non-Graphic Sex, Non-Graphic Violence, Other, Parallel Universe, Rape/Non-con Elements, more to come - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 05:14:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1027648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jimiel/pseuds/Jimiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Tell me what you want done, and I will try it, if I have to walk from here to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert." </i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>― Bilbo Baggins, from The Hobbit, "An Unexpected Party"</i></p><p>Bilbo Baggins, son of Bungo Baggins, was not a Hobbit. Not completely. And he's about to take the first real journey of his life, using the convenient arrival of a group of Dwarfs to lead him right to the place he wants to go... The stolen lair of his father, Smaug.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. From Oasis, With Regards

**Author's Note:**

> **_Disclaimer:_** I don't own anything that's noticeably canon. Someone else does.
> 
>  ** _Author's Note:_** If any part of chapter one seems vaguely familiar, about ten or so years ago I was a sub admin on a Middle-Earth roleplaying game and I was "Valar" of the were-worms species of that Middle-Earth reality. But it was a very long time ago. Belladonna/Smaug is in chapter 2.

During the first age, Morgoth used fire and sorcery to create monsters of pure destruction: the great dragons of Middle-Earth. Each of these first dragons varied depending upon Morgoth’s will as he wove the massive creatures into existence. Some were long and slender, walking on four legs or slithering through the water. Others were bulky and could smash boulders into dust. And eventually others were added: lean and powerful with giant wings that rivaled those of the Great Eagles of Manwë and flew through the air to rain destruction from above. Among all of the dragons were some who breathed fire, others frost, and still more who spat streams of burning acid. They were males of territorial greed willing to destroy all who invaded what they claimed as their own and females of brutal ferocity that knew only to destroy everything they deemed not worthy of their attention.

But Morgoth made a dreadful mistake when creating his most beautiful, powerful monsters… He made them frighteningly intelligent.

The original dragons were loyal to Morgoth without fault. They obeyed his commands and, when not following direct orders, they followed a long standing order to fill his ranks with more of their own kind. And it was this that changed the course of their destiny. For the new generations hatched within Morgoth’s devastating army were not compelled to unfailing loyalty. And they were smart enough to hide this from him his ilk for not all of the new dragons were of the same mindset as their forebears.

Nearly half of the new dragons, while still small enough to hide, would sneak into the villages and cities of humans, elves, and dwarfs, watching the way their civilizations behaved and grew. And the young dragons learned, forming their own opinions on the world. Then came the days when the kinder and gentler of the younglings made the first overtures to the cities they had been watching. Tentative truces and peaces were formed despite the war the first dragons continued to wage on seemingly all life. The young dragons, now adults, sided with their new allies allowing their own parents and even their own darker siblings to be slain to help end the War of Wrath.

In the years following the war, the darker of the young dragons that remained, for all of the originals had perished, fled to the Northern Waste. But the kind ones, the gentle ones that had even attacked their own kindred, furthered their alliances. They worked with the races of Men, Elves, and Dwarfs to learn more of what they were capable of within their own bodies. They learned the magics of other races, for fully half of their own bodies were pure sorcery, and unleashed their own abilities. But it wasn’t until whispers of those evil beings that remained were planning to try to leash the remaining dragons that they decided to go into their own hiding from Middle-Earth.

Preparing to leave the land they had called home, the dragons were presented with a grand surprise. For many of their allies wished to go with them on their journey. Perhaps a dozen elves, sixty humans, and twenty dwarfs wanted to remain with their allies, allies that had become friends. So great sky ships were created, ones that would allow the flying dragons to carry not only their non-flying kith, but also the non-dragons and all the supplies and belongings they wished to take as well.

After half a year of preparation, twenty-seven flying dragons lifted twenty-two giant sky ships, some so large that two dragons were required to move them, into the air. As the passengers waved, the dragons roared goodbye to those remaining and the group flew off into the east to look for a new home.

Flying dragons that moved with a purpose could cover vast distances in short amounts of time. They only stopped every two days for the flyers to eat and rest. Dragons, in normal circumstances, did not require as much food as their size would indicate. They were mostly made of fire and sorcery, both of which replenished on the very air around them, but they were also physical creatures and that physical aspect did require the occasional rest. The non-flying dragons that were passengers on the largest of the sky ships slept most of the trip, requiring no food in their hibernation. The flyers only required the ‘frequent’ rests because they were continuously active. And so, after only a month and a half of traveling, two weeks of which were ever shrinking circles, the dragons finally found what would become their new home and landed.

Emerging from the sky ships, the elves, dwarfs, and men looked confused, for they were in a vast sea of nothing. Dry sand and scorching heat greeted them in the burning sun as the flyers roughly, excitedly, roused their slumbering kith. For a time, the non-dragons were confused as the dragons took turns moving excitedly and sprawling in the glorious heat of the land known as the Last Desert.

Thinking their friends had gone quite mad; the small folk approached the mounds of dragons lazing in the heat. ‘Polite’ inquiries were made into the sanity of the dragons, for this was no place that beings not made of fire and scale could live. This reminded the dragons that they were not on this venture alone and they set about revealing the reason for the choice of a home to their tiny kith.

The slithering dragons, of which only four were among their number, moved to a specific patch a sand and heaved their long, muscular bodies, shoving piles of sand out of the way to reveal bare rock beneath the sand before the twelve acid-spitters moved forth. Drawing deep breaths, they took turns pouring the acid they stored within their bodies into the center of the newly bared rock patch. And halfway into a second round the sound of melting rock changed and a fount of water sprayed into the air. The pressure of the ground pushing the long held water out into the sky and touching the sands of the Last Desert for the first time.

With the new source of life revealed, the elves, dwarfs, men, and dragons began what would become a centuries long process of cultivating the center of the Last Desert into an oasis of life. All four races pitched together, using their impressive array of talents to turn what was once a barren land of sand into a lush paradise hidden from the world by the burning desert. Dwarfs used the acid and strength of the dragons to build and decorate their new homes in ways that pleased all of the eyes. Elves used their magic to encourage the newly wetted sand to turn into soil and began, with the men, to grow the seeds they had brought. The flyers took long trips, vanishing for weeks at a time before returning to report nothing but herds of wild animals, from which they brought meat to those stuck at the colony and plans were made to bring some back alive once the plant growth had reached a point to fully support their new city and the slowly growing population.

But the forming of Oasis, as the city was christened, was not the most impressive result of the new colony. The children, growing in a land where everyone of all races worked together, were a wonder. Only two tiny elves were among the eight dwarflings and small herd of human children were joined by half a dozen half-dwarfs and a half-elf. All of the children flocked regularly to the nest of four dragon eggs nestled in the hottest part of the city. They knew of the wars that had plagued the world outside of the desert, yet they did not share any of those opinions. They moved as a single unit from educations among the various races and began to form their own society and rules. Something new to Middle-Earth and unique to life in Oasis: a land without prejudice.

Less than eighty years after Oasis was began, the last of the original human settlers passed away. She had been ten when her parents decided they wanted to set out with the dragons, old enough to be helpful as the colony began. She had been among those planting the first crops that now thrived and fed the now fully self-sufficient city. She had done many things in the decades of her life: a farmer in the early years, one of the primary tenders of the children that began to fill the homes as the new parents continued to work on the city, a herder of the first animals brought to Oasis once the grass had taken well enough to sustain them, a mother, a glass-blower in her middle years, for glass was easy to make and used often in Oasis with all the fine sand and powerful dragon fire that required only a willing dragon to fuel, and eventually a grandmother. On what would be her last morning, she had finished the only piece of art she had ever made, a piece that had taken all of her last decade to perfect. It was a giant stained glass mural of the flight in the sky ships as they flew toward what would become Oasis. She died that night in her sleep, the last of the original humans of the colony. But as famous as her mural would become in Oasis, it was her youngest granddaughter that would change their lives forever.

Her name was Maitane and though her grandmother created the massive mural called “The Flight Home” on the back wall of what would become the library, Maitane herself was destined to have a far greater and much more important impact on life in Oasis and, ultimately, of life on Middle-Earth. For Maitane did the most simple and impacting thing ever done. She fell in love with Bithor, the massive, acid breathing, walker dragon that had once helped break the lake in the center of Oasis out of its stone prison.

For his part, Bithor was bemused by the gentle affection of the little girl. And, as she grew older, he was appreciative of the care and attention she gave the massive beast in preening his shimmering, sapphire scales. As she grew, her gestures of affection grew as well and Bithor, like any male, inevitably fell for the charms and loving nature of a small female. Had this happened a century previous, it surely would have been a scandal. But just recently a half-dwarf had given birth to the child of one of the original elves, so love among the races was accepted in Oasis. It was just the first time it had crossed into the dragon portion of the population.

At first it was entirely sweet and innocent between Maitane and Bithor but like all things, it too changed and grew. Maitane eventually proposed marriage and Bithor, wrapped around the small human female’s finger, agreed. Maitane was resplendent in the gauzy emerald robes she wore to her wedding and Bithor’s scales shimmered in the sun as they never had before and both were filled with joy.

Many believed that the marriage of Bithor and Maitane was one in name only, for how else could it be with the differences of their species working against them? It took two years for all of Oasis to learn that was not the case at all. Apparently Maitane had insisted that since so much of Bithor was magic that he could use that magic for them to be more and, during the first two years of their marriage, they worked out how to make their marriage one in truth… For two years after they were wed, Maitane showed the signs that she was with child.

She was watched by the healers her entire pregnancy, one that advanced so slowly that no one was certain just when she had become pregnant. The dragon part of the child had a long, slow life and so poor Maitane was pregnant for seventeen months after her pregnancy was first discovered. The babe looked to be fully human at his birth. As did his following two siblings, a sister ten years younger than him and a brother five years younger than her. They looked, and moved as if they were nothing more than humans and the rest of Oasis was baffled even as Bithor taught the magic he had used to be with Maitane to other dragons. More mixed pairings developed and more of these dragon hybrids that looked like the full-blooded children of their mothers joined the population. It would not be until ninety years after the birth of Maitane and Bithor’s first son, twenty years after Maitane’s death, that the full majesty of these dragon hybrids became known.

Though he had stopped physically aging at adulthood, the first dragon hybrid seemed to die at the end of a human lifespan. The population of Oasis was surprised and saddened at the seeming loss. But before they could even begin preparations for his remains, the hybrid screamed. His seemingly dead body lurched up, transforming before the eyes of all who had ran over at the scream. When it was finished, he was easily twelve feet tall, muscled, a blue tint to the skin that was now like smooth leather and pebbled with pearly bead-like scales. And it was then that the first of what would become the mythical were-worms was born, at the death of his mortal life.

Over the next decade his siblings also underwent their transformations and the century that followed the were-worm population of Oasis thrived. They were the best of their parents and developed powers of their own. Those descended from Dwarfs or Dwarf hybrids found the ability to melt solid stone under their touch and mold it like clay in their hands. The descendants of elves could grow plants in days what would have taken months of nurturing for their elfin kin. The human hybrids brought the best aspect to the new species… The malleability of humanity to races that were once so rooted in their ways and soon all of the were-worms were capable of flowing between their forms from that of their dominant non-dragon race to their hybrid form, to great full dragons.

Centuries passed, as they tended to do, and the dominant species of Oasis was now the wild were-worms. The four of the original elves and the elf twins born within the first decade of Oasis remained. Most of the original dragons remained as well, but the Dwarfs and Humans had bred out of existence within the population. The were-worms were still capable of assuming the forms, but none fully of those bloods remained. The dragons and two elves that had perished had done so out of love, following their mortal partners into the afterlife. The only time strife arose within Oasis was when a young were-worm or full dragon hatchling fell to the curse of greed within their race. It took days and sometimes months of isolation to break a young were-worm or dragon from their inborn obsession with objects that threatened to bring out the worst of their blood. But aside from that, peace and prosperity reigned within Oasis.

And, of course, from time to time, young were-worms capable of flight, or with a friend capable of flight, braved the trip from Oasis out into the world to gather information and spread rumors about wild were-worms…a favorite joke among the young were-worms to play on those beyond Oasis.

Then, one day, something new happened. A female dragon, heavily pregnant, nearly fell out of the sky at the edge of Oasis. She was a stranger to most of the city, though the oldest of the original dragon population recognized the pale ruby scales of the female as one of their sisters that had migrated to the Northern Wastes. She did not survive the trip to the desert long. She had been searching non-stop for them after the malice and greed of her kin had driven them all to death. She was the last… almost the last. For before her death, she laid a single egg in the warm sands of the rarely used hatching ground.

The hatchling was a beautiful red-gold fire breather and he was lavished with love and attention from the moment he broke out of his shell. They named him Smaug and spoiled him as any other child of Oasis was spoiled. What they forgot, in the gentle lives they had developed, was that Smaug was a child of a different breed to the gentle cousins that had rebelled against the violence he was born for. The gentle indulgence the people of Oasis gave to children was not the proper way to raise a hatchling of Smaug’s line and while he grew, learning all they could teach him of his abilities, he also learned a harsh greed. He was spoiled and arrogant, growing aggressive as he aged and lashing out any time his will was denied as he grew toward adulthood.

And then he reached the age where, among those of the Northern Wastes he would have violently fought for his place in society. His instincts told him that he had to strive for all he could grasp and hold it tight and he violently fell upon the gentle dragons and were-worms of Oasis. A dozen dragons and nearly twice that many were-worms fell to Smaug’s rage before Oasis rose against him and drove the aggressive dragon out of the Last Desert and banished him from Oasis for life.

Maddened by his loss, Smaug flew in a rage away from the place he had grown up. It was his first time leaving the desert and he cast his senses out, determined to find the best place he could to show those peaceful mongrels in the desert that he was superior. Flying swiftly through the land, he rained fire and death down on Middle-Earth as he cast his senses out, using the ones he had learned from the were-worms to find the small bits of gold they used for shiny decorations on rooftops to find the biggest amount he could… a search that led him to a solitary mountain in the distance.

With a roar of triumph, Smaug flew directly toward the mountain. He would claim it. He would take possession of the gold within. He would show the simple-minded mutations back in Oasis that he was superior.

And nothing would stand in his way.


	2. From Rohan, With Regards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Belladonna Took wants to go to Rohan to learn to ride a real horse. Too bad she decided to take the scenic route home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  **WARNING!**
> 
> This chapter contains all 'direct' mentions of the non-con/rape and mind control elements. Future chapters may or may not make mention of them, but all the actual deeds are in this one.

It was the year 2770 of the Third Age when the terrible Smaug took over the Lonely Mountain. He fell upon the city of Dale with death and fire before bursting into the Great Dwarrow Kingdom within the mountain. He razed those who opposed him and showed no mercy for the young and old caught in his path. Thankfully for the Dwarfs, he did not follow those who fled. Leaving them to depart as he tore apart the kingdom within the mountain to claim all the gold and jewels within for his newly claimed hoard. It would take more than two years for him to gather all he could pry loose from within the mountain before he did the same for the ruins of Dale.

For almost a decade after he finished gathering his hoard, Smaug wallowed in the gold, rolling and curling in the mass of wealth and polishing his glimmering crimson scales upon the gold. From time to time he would leave to gather some small nourishment for his physical activities, but for the most part, he merely gloated to the stones of his success. But like all youngsters hyped up on their success, it isn’t truly a success unless there is someone to gloat to. Smaug was as lonely as the mountain he stole.

Seeing as he had no desire to interact with the mongrel worms he had taken leave of, Smaug decided it would be best if he created his own flight of dragons. So every evening, when the winds brought the best breezes over the mountain, Smaug climbed to the peak and sent out a call for another of his kind, a call for mating. Night after night for over two decades Smaug made this pilgrimage until finally he had to concede that perhaps the residents of Oasis had been telling the truth that his mother was the last dragon left beyond the desert. He was alone. And all others of his kind were living in that riches-free place that dared to attack him and drive him away.

It was as he sat brooding over his situation, a situation he blamed upon the residents of Oasis, that his mind finally fell into line with the solution to his problem. For he had been taught the magic used by the dragons in Oasis, with their hopes that he would become one of them… He knew perfectly well what was done to allow him to breed with the smaller beings of Middle-Earth. And once he had some hybrid spawn of his own to train to his glory, they would be able to bring more of the gold and jewels still stuck within the mountain to him, their small form abilities would be very useful to the growth of his hoard.

Decision made, Smaug set about doing what no dragon had ever had need of or thought to do before… Altering a mating call to reach to those that were not dragons. He would need to bring someone brave because he would not tolerate large groups to attempt to steal his hoard. He would need a fertile female, so that he could gather his own collection of worker spawn quickly. And he would need someone strong to give him the best possible progeny for his own clan.

With all of these aspects in mind, Smaug set about imbuing his call with his inborn sorcery to alter it. He was more patient than ever before in his life, giving a year for each alteration of the call to give his future mate time to arrive before deciding the pattern needed to be changed and calling once more.

And finally, nearly a quarter of a century after he began, the soft sound of a gentle voice echoed through the mountain…

“Hello? Is anyone here?”

\--

The year was 2835 of the Third Age, 1235 by Shire Reckoning, when Belladonna Took decided that it was time for one more big adventure before she married her long time sweetheart, Bungo Baggins. Her plan, as she explained it to her older brother Gerontius as he helped her pack, was to venture to Rohan and learn to ride a real horse as their great-uncle Bullroarer once had. Gerontius, being a Took through and through, was naturally jealous of his sister as they had gone on many adventures together before he had married and now he had a son nearly three years old to take care of holding him to the Shire. So he made certain his sister had everything she would need from her Bounder’s bow to spare coins sewn into the hidden pockets of her bloomers.

After all, the Tooks were always the best Hobbits for adventuring and they knew a lot of tricks for having the best adventures.

“I shan’t be gone long, dearest brother…” Belladonna wrapped the smallest set of her spare travel clothes around her sewing kit and spare tinderbox before stuffing the parcel into a waterproof leather case, which she put in the bottom of her rucksack.

“Dearest?” Gerontius snorted. “Only… Wish I could go with you, Bell.” He stuffed her main tinderbox into a side pocket of the rucksack, the same one that held his sister’s travel silverware and the larger of the two skinning knives she would be taking. The other knife was in a sheath sewn to the inside of her traveling coat.

“And if you did you’d miss all of Isengrim’s firsts, you know that.” She shook her head before sliding some of her supply of spare coins into various nooks and crannies of her bag, the traveling clothes she was currently wearing, and in her coat. “We’ve talked about this.”

“Well, I’m gonna have a dozen faunts, you know.” Gerontius said this as if he and his wife Adamanta had discussed such a preposterous number of children already. “Plenty of firsts to see…” But his voice wavered, because firsts were always special no matter how many little ones were in the family.

Belladonna snorted as she picked up her sleep roll in one hand and rucksack in the other, clearly seeing right through her brother. Gerontius snagged her travel coat and followed as Belladonna left her room to head to the kitchen. In the kitchen, Bungo was helping Adamanta pack the food sacks that would rest in the top of Belladonna’s rucksack as well as a large basket that Bungo would be carrying, as he was walking as far as Bree with Belladonna. Together the four Hobbits worked out the best way to pack the most food on top of the travel clothing and supplies in the bottom half of the rucksack before pulling it closed and tying the sleep roll to the top. A small cook pot was hung from a bent nail at the top of her walking staff and soon she and Bungo were saying their goodbyes to Gerontius and Adamanta.

“Just you wait, I’ll be back with a real horse straight from Rohan before you know it!” She said by way of farewell, giving a wave as she started what Bungo would later declare was a brutal pace toward Bree.

Used to traveling, Belladonna teased Bungo into a faster pace than he normally would take for any trip. While they’re in the Shire they sleep in the smials various friends and relatives along the way. And then they were in Bree and while they had a late supper at the inn Belladonna glibly said that she’d never dawdled so much on a trip before, then smiled at Bungo’s look of exhaustion before she added that it had been fun.

They were in Bree for two days as they restocked Belladonna’s supplies. And then they part; she gave Bungo a promising kiss and a wave before hitching a ride in the wagon of a human family for the first segment of her journey. She waved and blew kisses to Bungo until she was out of sight. Once she’d gone, Bungo sighed and headed to the various shops he needed to visit before returning to Hobbiton. After all, he had a smial to build for Belladonna that he needed to have ready for her wedding present by the time she returned.

\--

Belladonna Took was a remarkable adventurer. This was mostly because she had an insatiable curiosity for all things and was easily sidetracked into new adventures along the way. In fact, she had been side tracked on the way to, and in, Rohan so much that it was three years before she finally turned her wandering feet toward home… or at least until she turned the hooves of her sweet Rohirrim mare toward home.

It really wasn’t her fault that she was gone so long. Apparently the Rohirrim had songs and legends of Hobbits from centuries before, calling them Holbytlan. She was so enchanted at being called Mistress Holbytla that she could do naught else but to stay and learn the secrets that the Rohirrim remembered of her kind from before the wandering years. She did her best to live up to the legends. She did at least send home letters regularly, and it wasn’t until Gerontius hinted that Bungo’s gift to her was reaching monstrous proportions that she finally said her farewells to Rohan and picked a route to take her home.

As fate would have it, the route that she picked would take her through a town that was built on a lake! That was surely a sight she’d have to see before heading home, so she turned her sweet mare, which she dutifully named Snowdrop due to the white tear-shape star on her forehead. That she was heading northeast instead of west meant nothing. She was merely taking the scenic route, after all… It was a whole town! On a lake! Besides, she felt that Snowdrop would aid the passage of time and ultimately reduce the length of her trip. So she said her farewells from her new friends and departed.

Normally Belladonna was very good at reading maps and feeling the earth around her to determine her location, but a month or so after leaving Rohan something started to throw off her sense of the earth. There was a large chunk of pain and sorrow filtering through the soil and, being a Hobbit, she turned Snowdrop’s reins in the direction of the sorrow and went to investigate what could make the earth feel such sorrow. Days later she entered what could only be called a desolate land.

Belladonna wasn’t too proud to admit that she slid out of Snowdrop’s saddle and wept at the sight of the burned and empty land, land that was still reeling in shock from the calamity that befell it. It was nearly an hour later that she unsaddled Snowdrop and made a camp at the edge of the desolation. She felt it her duty to see if she could determine the cause of what seemed a continuing disease that forced the land to remain barren. The last thing she remembered from that night was eating her dinner.

The next morning she was halfway between an enormous mountain and the camp she had left all of her things and Snowdrop, exhausted and with no idea how she had gotten there. She considered heading back to camp, but figured that since she was already this far into the desolation she may as well look around a bit more… And sleep. So that’s exactly what she did. Belladonna wandered, closer and closer to the mountain until she was too tired and then found a slab of bare rock that looked like a wall from the ruins of an old city to curl up on for sleep.

When next she woke, Belladonna’s mind was caught in a trance and her feet moved her swiftly toward the mountain. Hours later she was entering the ruins of what appeared to be a palace built right into the mountain itself. A faint, brief burst of voices seemed to try to encourage her to leave and she roused from her stupor long enough to speak.

“Hello? Is anyone here?”

Utter silence met Belladonna’s inquiry before a low rumbling vibrated the very stones below her feet. Startled, she turned to run out of the passageway when a gust of hot, musky air wafted over her and her mind slid into a peaceful void once more.

The next three days went by in only vague images and impressions to Belladonna. She would later confess to Bungo that she remembered a mountain of gold as a bed, intense heat, a creature that was not human and only slightly larger than herself, and looming in the sky above her this massive creature with eyes like molten gold watching everything below. She would admit, with tears in her eyes, that she lay with the small creature. That she had no control over what happened, that it made her feel ill and yet at the same time she enjoyed it. She would tell him how her hunger finally woke her while the creature slept and she gathered her clothing, fleeing out of the haunted palace of the demon and calling for Snowdrop as soon as she was free, how Snowdrop saved her.

She told Bungo how they raced to get her things from the fateful camp and, never stopping, fled from the mountain. She told of how she’d trembled for three nights with the other females in Lake Town, where they regularly secluded themselves in the evening to avoid the haunting pull of the mountain. How some beast had raged through the sky on the first night and she had bitten her lips and covered her ears, knowing that it was looking for her. She told Bungo, clinging to him, about how she was sick the first month of her journey back, jumpy and nervous and it wasn’t until she was in Rivendell that she finally felt safe and spent a further two months recovering under Lord Elrond’s care. She told Bungo how she would understand if he was disgusted and wanted to call off their wedding, she wouldn’t blame him and she was done with adventures forever.

Bungo, bless his heart, married her two months later.

What Belladonna was never brave enough to tell Bungo, was that she hadn’t had her monthlies once since the mountain. She never told him of the worried looks Elrond would sometimes give her. And she never, ever told him how for the first few minutes after he was born almost two years after the mountain incident, their little Bilbo’s eyes had burned like molten gold…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm already a crappy updater, if you haven't figured that out already, but we're in the process of cleaning out our house of 14 years so that we can move... So I'm not sure when I'll have time to work on the next update. It also doesn't help that my mind is already ready to write much, much -later- chapters for this fic as well as my Family Ri fic... *facepalms*
> 
> Also, I tend to get nervous about reviews on my longer works and to help stave off writer's block I won't look at them or respond until I post the next chapter. So I apologize for those that reviewed to chapter one and didn't get an immediate response compared to how I respond to reviews on my one-shots. :)


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